Cheaters (41 page)

“Oh boy,” Tammy said. In the rearview I saw her patting her forehead. Then she started taking the bobby pins out of her hair. “I got a hangover and I ain’t even went to sleep yet. Lawd. I know better than to drink on an empty stomach.”

Miles of freeway passed in minutes.

Tammy was passing out, but me and Karen kept going at it.

I let the bad things that had been floating around in my mind run free. “Karen, I wasn’t going to say anything, but the last time I was at your place, I saw a stack of bills sitting on your kitchen counter. And they were in pink envelopes, so that meant they were late. A stack of debt that looked like a leaning tower of misery.”

“I pay my own bills,” Karen said. She sucked in one side of her cheek, pursed her lips. “Nobody helps me.”

“You buy weed before you pay your bills. Help me to understand that.”

Her tongue clucked; her face stretched out at the chin.

“Karen, don’t get me wrong.” I was on a roll. “All of this is love and concern. I did your taxes for you the last couple of years, and to be honest, you didn’t have any financial growth. Over and over I’ve told you that I’m just worried about your future. Where you’re going to be five years from now.”

That’s when Karen took control of the conversation, reached back into the past, dug down into her bag of insults

and started bringing up all kinds of old mess. And, of course, I had to do the same.

By the time we were zooming up the 60 and passing by the Hop and Puente Hills Mall, Karen had her finger in my face and was spewing out, “Just like when Michael fucked you over and you had to attack me to get your self-esteem back.”

“This ain’t about that.”

“Well, I might not have a job at Moss Adams, but at least I’m not waking up in the middle of the night because somebody’s
wife
and
three
kids are at my door yelling for their
daaaadeeeee
—”

I scowled. “That’s over and done with, so don’t go there please.”

“Maybe the people at Moss Adams should teach their employees to be intelligent enough to at least see where a man lives before she bends over and drops her drawers down to her ankles. That’s common sense.”

With wide eyes and a fiery tongue, I echoed, “Common sense.”

“If that’s what you heard, then that’s what I said,” she said with power. “I remember all the crap you’ve said.
Friend.
All of your little digs. Yeah, why would Craig ask somebody like me out? I don’t have a boring white-collar job or an overpriced condo or parents that have kept me so sheltered from the real world that I don’t have a
clue.
”

All I could say was, “Ouch.”

Karen added, “When Stephan walks over you, call one of your friends who has a career to save your ass.”

“What makes you think Stephan is gonna walk over anybody?”

“Because they all do.”

I gripped the steering wheel. Felt my throat tighten. My eyes were hot. Tears were on the way, but I used all of my energy to make them go back. I lost that battle.

Karen continued, “And you make it easy for them, because you’re so quick to get butt naked and horizontal.”

“I hope you choke on Victor.”

She chuckled. “Is that the best you can do?”

Tammy woke up long enough to shout out, “Damn, I’m sick!”

“Tammy, don’t holler in my damn ear,” I said.

I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand.

Karen didn’t say anything else.

I didn’t say anything. By the time I got off the freeway at Grand, my throat was so tight I could hardly breathe.

My insides felt heavy, and I knew I was two seconds from the first drop in a bucket of tears. She’d hurt me, but I felt bad for hurting her back. We’d both been stabbed with the truth.

“Karen, you know I didn’t mean it like that. I’m high, and the Spumante has me yakking out of the side of my face.”

Karen wiped her eyes. “Funny how alcohol makes people address what’s in their hearts.”

“You should know.”

I rat-tat-tapped my nails on the steering wheel as I drove the last stretch to Diamond Bar Boulevard. Since I didn’t have a passenger-side air bag, I wanted to ram Karen’s side of the car into a light pole, make her fly out the window like a crash-test dummy, but I didn’t want to hurt Tammy. Or my red car.

Tammy was knocked out, so deep in the backseat that I couldn’t see her. She’d slept through most of the bickering.

It was after two in the morning when we made it back to my haven. Karen grabbed their overnight bags, and I went to help Tammy’s inebriated butt.

Tammy said, “Are we at—we at, hell, where were we going?”

I told her, “We’re at my house.”

“Somebody help me,” Tammy slurred as she stumbled out of my buggy. She leaned against the car and ran her hands across her messed-up mane. “Where we at? Denny’s or Coco’s?”

I told her, “Take my hand before you fall over. You gonna help me or what, Karen?”

“Let her fall and bust her head wide open,” she said. “That’ll stop her from drinking so much.”

I said, “I hope my neighbors ain’t watching.”

“Who cares about all of these white people?” Karen said. “‘Cause they sure don’t care about you.”

Tammy took a baby step and moaned. “We there yet?”

Karen went up the few stairs, opened the door, and went

inside. Left me to drag Tammy’s oversized butt by myself. It wasn’t easy, ‘cause she wasn’t cooperating too much.

I took Tammy straight to the bathroom. And I did it in the dark. Except for where the night light outside the bathroom shone, the house was pitch black. Well, some illumination stole in from the porch light, but not enough to make a difference.

Before I got to the living room, I heard these awful choking, gagging sounds. I dashed into the hallway and turned on the light so I could see.

Tammy had her face in the toilet bowl, sweating like she had the fever of death, crying, drooling, and slurring, “Lawd, I need me some Pepto-Bismol. I promise, if you make this stop, I’ll never drink again. I promise. I know I said that the last time, but I mean it this time.”

Karen had stopped in the living room and stood in the darkness. I heard her voice, “Both of you bitches are pathetic.”

“Who are you calling a bitch?”

“Who answered?” She’d jumped too bold for her own good. “She’s chasing a married nigga, and you’re ready to ho with every nigga that lays his eyes on you.”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”

“Oh, you heard it. Pretend all you want, you heard it.” Karen shook her head. “Look at her, acting like a lush. Everything that both of you do is so degrading to black women.”

“Stop it, Karen.”

“No, you need to stop it. You might have a middle-class life, but you have ghetto values.”

I grabbed a towel and wiped Tammy’s face. Her face had turned red in some spots, ashy in others. Her eyeliner had melted and made her look like a sick raccoon. After she had regurgitated as much as she could, I cleaned her and lay her on the bed in the guest bedroom, under the ceiling fan, and put a cold towel across her neck, a remedy my momma had shown me when I came staggering home on prom night.

I moved her hair from her eyes, said, “Let me know when the towel gets warm, okay, sweetheart?”

Tammy squinted her face and almost nodded. She mumbled, “What y’all yelling about?”

I asked, “The fan too high?”

Tammy slightly shook her head.

“Y’all stop yelling. My head can’t take no noise…”

A trail of Tammy’s sins were in my carpet, but it wasn’t too bad and didn’t smell. Even if it was splattered wall to wall, that would be the least of my problems. I soaped a towel and wiped over the mess. I’d get the carpet cleaner later.

I raised my eyes. Karen was standing over me. Silent. I stepped into the bathroom and closed the door.

“Chanté?” Karen called.

I didn’t answer.

The doorknob turned, slow, and the door eased open.

We looked at each other through the darkness.

She spoke up. “I’ve answered your questions, now answer mine.”

“What question?”

“How many dicks have been inside you? Or have you had more buck-fifty lovers than you can count?”

I jumped up to Karen’s face.

She didn’t flinch.

The heifer stuck her finger into the middle of my forehead and pushed, snapped my head back so hard I thought she’d broken my spine. I lost my footing and fell down on the bathroom floor.

Karen gritted her teeth, stood over me. “I wish you would.”

“
Bitch
, get out,” I said. “Get your ignorant ass out of my motherfucking house.”

“Ignorant?”

“Your no-ambition ass.”

Karen paused, then turned around and walked away.

The front door opened.

Karen’s voice came back, “It’s time for me to go back to my little box in Riverside. My dead-end job is waiting for me.”

Silence.

Karen emphasized, “Don’t call me anymore.”

The door clicked closed.

I sat on the floor in the darkness for a minute. I tried to wipe the sweat from my face, the tears away from my eyes. Tried to hold it all back but I cried.

Darnell called me early Sunday morning. A very stressed, angry Darnell.

He said, “Jake has been acting up.”

“How bad?”

“He’s going to end up behind bars.”

“That bad?”

“That bad.”

Rain was tapping on my windows. Draining from the roof, falling through the evergreen trees outside my window. Phase two of the storm had blown in yesterday afternoon, and it was raining like crazy. Out west in Malibu, million-dollar homes were slipping off the hills.

I said, “Damn. Where he is?”

“At his condo. But he’s not answering.”

“Then how do you know he’s home?”

“Pamela called.”

I was shocked. “Pamela called you?”

“‘Those dreams are fucking him up.’ That’s a quote. She made him sound like a crackhead wandering around skid row.”

Jake sat up, coughed for a while before he got his words out. “As soon as I fall asleep I start suffocating…”

He was wide-eyed and shaking, unshaven, in a wrinkled LAFD T-shirt, dark blue firefighter pants, reeking like he’d slept in a pasture of cows. Eyes beet red.

As I eased off my damp trench coat, I said the only thing I could think of, “It was only a dream.”

Darnell was sitting at the dining room table, dressed in jeans and a short leather jacket. We’d driven in separate cars, and he’d been here about ten minutes. I’d wanted to

carpool, but for some reason Darnell didn’t want to. Which didn’t make any sense.

Darnell’s voice boomed, “Deal with it or stop bringing it up.”

Pamela walked into the room, stopped underneath the picture of Jake’s parents. She had on blue pants and a white polo shirt, her work clothes.

She said, “He choked me. See these marks on my throat?”

Our eyes went to the bruises that looked like elongated passion marks on her neck.

“He was screaming, and when I woke him up”—her saliva looked as thick as clam chowder—“he started choking me like he was trying to kill me. I almost passed out.”

Jake said, “Stop exaggerating. That was an accident.”

“Accident?”
With that, Pamela walked out of the room, muttering, “You strangle me till I turn blue and that’s an
accident?
”

That was as much as I’d ever heard her say.

I asked Jake, “Pamela called the police on you?”

“Naw. Charlotte flipped out and dialed nine-eleven.”

My mouth was wide open. “Serious?”

Darnell asked, “What the hell did you do?”

“Nothing.”

Darnell barked, “
Nothing?
”

I said, “Darnell, calm down. We’re here now, so calm down.”

Outside, the rain was coming down. While I’d struggled up the 60 west and crept past downtown to the 405 north, rain had come down so fast my windshield wipers could barely knock the water away. It took two hours to drive a forty-mile stretch.

Jake sounded baffled. “Hell, she can’t be serious. I’ve sent her flowers almost every day. Long-stem roses. Last night when she got home, I was waiting for her with roses in both hands. I put them in a nice vase and left them in her living room.”

I asked, “She let you in?”

“I used my key.”

Darnell dropped his head, rubbed his lips. I did the same.

Jake snapped, “She ran next door to Valerie’s house and

called the sheriff. When I went over, she pointed a damn .380 in my face.”

Incredulous, I said, “Charlotte pointed a gun at you?”

“Right between my goddamn eyes.”

I said, “You know she’s scared of you.”

Darnell responded, “If he didn’t then, he knows it now.”

Jake shook his head. “Then Charlotte called the chief at the fire station, called my damn job and tried to file a complaint.”

I said an unimpressed “No shit?”

“
Get a clue
,” Darnell shouted.

Jake raised both of his middle fingers at us.

A pause.

Darnell said, “She said you’d been following her.”

Jake shook his head, “I ain’t
followed
no-damn-body.”

Silence.

Visions of my daddy, begging my momma. Tears of diplomacy. All of that popped in my head. As clear now as it was then.

I blinked that remembrance away.

That was when I saw Pamela had come back. She was standing in the door frame between the bedroom and the kitchen. Arms folded. Tears rippling down her face. She scowled at Darnell, glowered at me.

She said, “That cow sent me some tapes. Sent them to my job. Stuff she had recorded off the telephone.”

I had no idea what I had said, or what Darnell had said, but her dark eyes said that we would never be her friends.

Jake chuckled, “Charlotte’s crazy. Man, she duplicated those tapes and sent copies to my family, with a note telling them that ‘The wedding that was never planned has been called off.’”

Some silence, not much. Rain made all the noise.

I asked, “How much sleep have you had?”

“Few minutes. Every time I nod off, those dreams come back.”